Yeah, I’m not buying it.

Uber has not been having a good month. For one thing, its ’employees’ are starting to get wise to the fact that the company makes money by exploiting its drivers.

I’ve put scare-quotes around the word ’employees’ because Uber likes to pretend that the people who drive the ‘Ubers’ that make the company money don’t have anything to do with it.

It’s confusing, I know. When I want to go somewhere, I hail an ‘Uber’. I’ve certainly never hailed a ‘Steve’.

Then there was that awkward incident with former Uber CEO Travis Kalanick, who was caught on video behaving like a rich douchebag with zero understanding of the hardships faced by Uber drivers, before being ousted from his role.

Moving on to the current CEO of Uber, Dara Khosrowshahi, who recently spoke to CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour.

Khosrowshahi defended Uber’s business model, which involves the company investing heavily in promotions to entice customers to its on-demand ride and meal-delivery offerings.

“The model is absolutely sustainable,” Khosrowshahi said. “The business, for example, is still growing 30-plus percent on a global basis. And anytime you have a business that has the kind of market size of trillions of dollars in terms of transportation and food and global commerce, it makes sense for a company to invest.”

Cool. Except, Uber lost $5,2 billion in the three months ending in June, which amounts to its largest quarterly loss ever.

Stock-based compensation related to its initial public offering accounted for $3.9 billion, but the remaining $1.3 billion in losses were still 50% higher than the year before.

One of the challenges that Uber is facing at the moment is the California legislation that would make it more difficult for companies to classify workers as independent contractors instead of employees. 

“The law, of course applies, but we don’t think that the law, as it relates to us, would classify our drivers as full-time workers,” Khosrowshahi said.

The law, known as AB-5, would require a business like Uber to prove its contract workers are free from company control, perform work that is outside the usual course of business for the company and have independently established businesses providing similar work in order to be classified as such.

“We do think that the nature of independent work should change,” Khosrowshahi said. “We do believe that they should get health care. We do believe that they should have minimum earnings.”

Yes, friend. That’s what they’re asking for. Welcome…

Before we start giving this guy the benefit of the doubt, though, let’s take a look at how Uber runs its business.

Take it away, HYPEBEAST.

Interviews with over 20 current and former members of Uber‘s investigation team state that Uber puts the company’s liability over the safety of its riders.

“Investigators are there first to protect Uber; and then next to protect the customer,” says former Uber investigator and trainer Lilli Flores. “Our job is to keep the tone of our conversations with customers and drivers so that Uber is not held liable.”

The investigations team, made up of around 80 employees, is tasked with handling the worst of the worst Uber rides gone wrong, yet has little to no control over the outcome of the situations. The agents are allegedly not allowed to contact police based on any of the situations they hear even when felonies are brought to their attention, and they are forbidden from advising riders to contact police or seek legal counsel.

It gets worse. Much, much worse.

According to the interviews, Uber employs a three-strike system for misbehaving drivers, but exceptions have been made in questionable cases. The Washington Post notes one instance in particular where a driver reportedly made sexual advances on three different riders. The investigator assigned to the case was overruled by an Uber executive, and the driver continued working until he allegedly raped a passenger.

Even if drivers are kicked off the app, however, Uber does not inform the police, meaning they could technically transition to a competing ride-share company.

So no one is safe except the Uber execs. Got it.

FYI, Dara Khosrowshahi has a net worth of $200 million.

You can catch the full interview with Amanpour, here.

[sources:cnn&hypebeast]